From Guesswork to Everyday Student Voice: Henty Public School’s First-Year Journey
Henty Public School is a small regional New South Wales primary school, in its first year of partnering with Life Skills GO. The school introduced a daily check-in, embedded directly into the roll marking teachers already do every morning, so staff could hear from every student, not only the ones whose struggles were already visible.
By capturing student voice alongside attendance and behaviour each day, Life Skills GO helps the school’s Assistant Principal and classroom teachers better understand what may be sitting beneath a child’s readiness to learn, open more grounded conversations with families and the school counsellor, and test their own assumptions about what is actually affecting their students, rather than relying on observation alone.
The Story in 60 Seconds
A short summary for anyone short on time. Everything below goes deeper.
The Challenge
In a small, close-knit school, staff spoke to students every day but had little structured way to hear from every child, so wellbeing was mostly seen when something had already gone wrong.
What They Did
The school built a daily check-in into roll marking, asked for one check-in a day to build a baseline, and let teachers set their own pace after that.
What Changed
Around 80 per cent of teachers now check in with their students more than once a day, and staff use the data to ask better questions and test their assumptions.
Try This First
Attach the check-in to something teachers already do, and get a baseline before asking for more.
Who Is Henty Public School?
A small primary school in regional New South Wales, serving around 76 students from Kindergarten to Year 6, with a multi-categorical support class of three students alongside its mainstream classrooms.
Read more about the school
Henty’s classes are small, and the community around them is close-knit. Many students have siblings already at the school. Some children catch a bus each morning, others walk in from town, and the school is supported by what its Assistant Principal describes as a very enthusiastic Parents and Citizens Association. The school is, in her words, “quite supported and very much part of our community.”
That closeness can create its own blind spot. In a small school, staff can assume they already know every child simply because the community is small and everyone is in regular contact. Henty’s experience over its first year with Life Skills GO suggests that assumption does not always hold, and that even a well-known, well-supported student body benefits from a consistent, whole-school way of asking every child how they are.
A new partner, already embedded in daily practice
Henty Public School introduced Life Skills GO earlier this year, beginning with a single daily check-in embedded into the roll marking teachers already complete each morning. Four to five months on, the check-in has become a genuine daily habit for most of the school, led by the school’s Assistant Principal, who oversees the school’s wellbeing management and also teaches a relief-from-face-to-face lesson in every class across the school.
Erika CrevatinAssistant Principal“We all know that if they’re not happy, if they’re not ready to learn, then the learning’s gonna come second anyway. So it was just, it was a way for us to hopefully support our students to have greater learning success at school.”
Before Life Skills GO: Wellbeing Seen Only When Something Had Already Gone Wrong
Before this year, Henty relied on Sentral for its wellbeing management and on the relationships staff already had with students. For a school this size, that felt like enough, until its Assistant Principal looked closely at what it was actually showing her.
No Real Student Voice
Staff spoke to students regularly and stayed close to their community, but there was little structured way to hear from the students themselves. As Henty’s Assistant Principal puts it, “we didn’t really have much of a student voice in the, in what we were looking at.”
Read more
Today, a daily check-in gives every student a consistent, private way to say how they are, whether or not anyone has already noticed something is wrong.
Visibility Only When Things Went Wrong
If a student was having an issue, staff would talk to them. But there was no easy way to notice when something was going right, or to see the quieter students who were not causing concern but might still be struggling.
A Handful of Check-Ins, Far Apart
The school ran occasional check-ins for students, but these were, in the Assistant Principal’s words, “pretty far and few between” as sources of usable data. There was no consistent, whole-school baseline to track how a student was really travelling from week to week.
Erika CrevatinAssistant Principal“I mean, we all speak to our students and we chat to them. We use Sentral as part of our wellbeing management. So, you know, if something was going wrong or if a kid was having an issue, you would talk to them, but you didn’t necessarily notice if something’s going right, or if there’s other issues.”
Building Buy-In: Fit It Into What Teachers Already Do
The most common question other small schools ask Henty is how it got most of its teachers checking in with students more than once a day, without anyone being told they had to. The answer began with a deliberately slow, low-pressure introduction.
Read the full buy-in story
Henty’s principal asked the Assistant Principal, who already managed the school’s wellbeing data in Sentral, to follow up on Life Skills GO and see how it might work for the school. As she puts it, she is “so reticent to put stuff on my staff that I see no purpose in” or that would create extra work, so the platform had to fit inside what teachers already did each day, not add to it.
That meant starting with the roll. All staff did initial training together with Life Skills GO, and the Assistant Principal did as much of her own professional learning as she could, so she understood the platform well enough to answer her own staff’s questions. She was honest that the platform needed to suit Henty’s own situation, not the other way around.
Teachers were not required to check in more than once a day. Around 80 per cent of Henty’s teachers now check in with their students more than once, and the Assistant Principal is clear that this was not something she demanded. It has grown because teachers are seeing what the data gives them back in their own conversations with students.
Name the gap out loud
Frame it as hearing from every student, not just the ones already flagged as struggling.
Attach it to the roll
Build the check-in into roll marking, something every teacher already does every morning.
Get baseline data first, before asking for more
Ask teachers for one check-in a day for several months, to build a reliable baseline, before suggesting anything else.
Let teachers set their own pace
Suggest, rather than insist, that teachers try an additional check-in after a break, once they were ready.
Model it from the front, in a real classroom
The Assistant Principal reviews her own dashboard first thing every day, in the class she teaches, and uses it to decide who to check on and how.
Read more
She now exports check-in reports to see whole-school patterns quickly, and takes those patterns back into staff meetings and conversations with individual teachers.
Respect the students who opt out
A small number of older students choose not to check in. Staff still talk with them about why their voice matters, rather than forcing a check-in that would not reflect how they actually feel.
Erika CrevatinAssistant Principal“It has to work in with what they do, and it has to give them something back. So it has to make what we do as educators even better.”
Embedding It: Start With the Baseline, Then Build
Henty’s first months with Life Skills GO were not a big launch. They were a deliberately small, steady habit, built once a day through the roll, before anything else was added.
We Started With the Baseline
Teachers were asked to get every child checking in once a day, as a minimum, so the school could build reliable baseline data. That was the whole ask for the first several months.
Make It Part of the Roll
The check-in happens as part of the roll marking procedure, as students settle in for the day. Teachers put up the roll, and students check in as they arrive, whether on paper, on a device, or as part of getting their desks ready.
Give Students Space and Privacy
Younger students are less aware of who else is in the room when they check in. For the school’s older students, staff deliberately gave them space to check in privately, rather than in front of the whole class.
Model It in the Classroom
The Assistant Principal teaches a relief-from-face-to-face lesson in every class in the school, which gives her a reason to check in with students herself and to talk to their teachers about what she is noticing. She has started weaving Life Skills GO lessons directly into that teaching time.
Let Teachers Choose Their Own Pace
No teacher was told to check in more than once a day. Most have chosen to, because they are seeing the value for themselves.
Erika CrevatinAssistant Principal“It’s making our conversations more purposeful. It’s allowing the teacher to then quietly talk to their student about the concerns that they have, or why they’re feeling a certain way or why they’re tired, and then to be able to make the connection with families to support the student when they’re feeling this way.”
First Two Terms of Change
Henty’s shift is still early, but it is already visible across two terms of data. What began as anecdote and observation before this year has become a daily, whole-school habit built around a single question, asked consistently.
Before · This Year
- Wellbeing was managed through Sentral, professional observation and conversations with students, without a consistent, structured way to hear from every child.
- We spoke to students when something seemed wrong, but did not necessarily notice when something was going right.
- Occasional check-ins existed, but were far and few between as a source of usable data.
- We had no reliable baseline for how a student was travelling from week to week.
- We assumed transport to school, especially the bus, was a significant factor in how students arrived, without data to test that assumption.
- Quiet students who were not causing concern could go unnoticed.
- Conversations with families about a child’s wellbeing relied on staff observation, not the child’s own voice.
- We could not easily separate a student’s emotion from their behaviour when something went wrong.
- We had no consistent way to test our own assumptions about what might be affecting a student’s readiness to learn.
The Shift · A Daily Check-In on the Roll
- A brief daily check-in completed as part of roll marking, in class or on a device, as students settle in
- A minimum of one check-in a day, kept in place for several months to build a reliable baseline
- Custom context tags, refined with student input, such as changing “on the bus” to “on the way to school” once students explained not everyone travels the same way
- The Assistant Principal reviewing her dashboard each morning in the class she teaches, to decide who to follow up with
- Exported check-in reports used to see whole-school patterns quickly, and shared into staff conversations
- Students who choose not to check in still invited into a conversation about why their voice matters
After · The First Two Terms
- Wellbeing data now includes the students themselves, not only what staff observe.
- Staff can see how a student says they are feeling, and where they say that feeling is coming from.
- Around 80 per cent of teachers now check in with their students more than once a day, without being told to.
- Teachers can separate a student’s emotion from their behaviour, and ask why rather than react to what shows up in the room.
- Reports are shared with the school counsellor and, where relevant, the school nurse, and printed for parent meetings.
- Conversations with families can be grounded in what the student has said, rather than relying on observation alone.
- Early data suggests that how students travel to school is not as significant a factor in their readiness to learn as staff had assumed, allowing the school to test its own hypotheses and move on to new ones.
- The school has noticed that “tired” is a frequently checked emotion, and is now working with its school nurse to explore what that may mean for students and families.
- The school has set a goal to lift its whole-school readiness to learn by 9 percentage points, from its Term 3 baseline to 75 per cent by the end of Term 4, with Year 6 already reporting readiness to learn above 80 per cent.
- Staff believe negative behaviour incidents have started to reduce since introducing the daily check-in, though the school had not yet pulled the exact term-by-term numbers to confirm this at the time of writing.
Erika CrevatinAssistant Principal“Knowing your students and being able to have this conversation with your staff just means that you’re much more proactive, and much more direct in where you’re gonna go. You can see where you need to go, who you need to talk to, and what you need to ask them about. So it’s saving you time in that respect.”
What They Can See Now That They Couldn’t Before
At a small school like Henty, one person often wears several hats. Here is what the daily check-in has made visible for students, for teachers in the classroom, for the wider support network around a child, and for leadership and families.
Now:
- A private, consistent way to say how they are, every day
- A single check-in that breaks a long run of “happy” can be the first sign something has changed
- Older students given the privacy of checking in on their own device rather than in front of the class
- Students who choose not to check in still told their voice matters, and still invited into a conversation
“I checked in, you know, during the playground, I asked her how it was going and said, you checked in sad, what’s going on? And she said, oh, my horse passed away.”
Erika Crevatin, Assistant PrincipalNow:
- A daily read on how students say they are, before anything else happens in the room
- A reason to check in with a student, and a reason to check in with other teachers about that student
- More purposeful conversations, grounded in what a student has actually said, not just observed behaviour
- A way to build a picture over time, rather than reacting to a single day
“It’s, I guess, really making our conversations much more purposeful. It’s allowing the teacher to then quietly talk to their student about the concerns that they have.”
Erika Crevatin, Assistant PrincipalNow:
- Individual student reports shared with the school counsellor when a check-in flags a need for support
- Reports shared with the school nurse, who is exploring patterns such as how often “tired” appears as a checked-in emotion
- Whole-school patterns exported and reviewed to see where support may be needed
- A record of student voice that support staff can refer to alongside a referral or a conversation
“I had checked in, I had shared a report, her report, with our school counsellor because she was going to check in with the student.”
Erika Crevatin, Assistant PrincipalNow:
- Printed individual student reports brought into parent meetings and learning support meetings
- A whole-school goal, set from real data, to lift readiness to learn by the end of the term
- Conversations with families that open up new questions, rather than only confirming what staff already suspected
- A daily leadership habit: dashboard reviewed first thing, patterns noticed, and the right staff member followed up with directly
“We have used our student data with a few parents, not just to prove them wrong or anything like that, but just to show that we are here for their children and this is what we are seeing.”
Erika Crevatin, Assistant PrincipalGiving Every Student a Voice
Henty runs a multi-categorical support class of three students alongside its mainstream classrooms, and even in its first two terms, the daily check-in has already surfaced moments its Assistant Principal did not expect.
The Habit of “Good” Hides the Real Answer
Australians are trained from an early age to answer “how are you going?” with “good,” almost without thinking about it. A daily, structured check-in gives students a different kind of question, one that asks for a real answer rather than a reflex.
The Day a Quiet Student Said “Sad”
One student checked in “happy” most days, even though her mother believed she was often sad at home. One day, that student checked in “sad.” A quiet conversation in the playground revealed that her horse had passed away, a real emotion the check-in gave her a way to name. Her Assistant Principal shared the report with the school counsellor so the student could be supported.
Testing an Assumption About the Bus
Staff assumed getting to school, especially by bus, was a significant factor in how ready students were to learn. After listening to students, the school changed its context tag from “on the bus” to “on the way to school,” since many children travel by car or walk with siblings. Early data now suggests transport may matter less than staff first thought, a hypothesis the school is still testing.
Checking In on the Way Out the Door
Because the Assistant Principal teaches a lesson in every class, she can check in with students at different points in the day, including just before they go home, to see if anything looks different by the afternoon.
Respecting the Students Who Say No
A small number of older students have decided they do not wish to check in. Rather than force it, staff talk with them about why the school wants to hear their voice, and keep the door open. As Henty’s Assistant Principal puts it, “although it’s a completely different conversation compared with a child that does check in, it’s, you’re still having that check in.”
A Word That Keeps Coming Up
Staff noticed how often students check in as “tired.” The school is now working with its school nurse, who also works for the Department of Health, to understand what that pattern might mean and how to support families around sleep.
“It was just so valuable for me because I’ve made a connection with her already through horses. It’s something we shared. But I was then able to share her report with our school counsellor. She’s a quiet kid. She probably wouldn’t have shared that a horse passed away, but at least we could then talk about it in a supportive way.”Erika Crevatin, Assistant Principal, Henty Public School
What We Learned: Key Takeaways
Two terms into embedding Life Skills GO, distilled into what Henty’s Assistant Principal would tell any small school starting out.
Name the Gap: You Might Not Have Student Voice
Even a close, well-known school community can be missing a structured way to hear directly from students. Talking to kids is not the same as consistently asking every child how they are.
Attach the Check-In to Something Teachers Already Do
Building the check-in into roll marking meant it was not a new job. It was a different way of doing something teachers were already required to do every morning.
Get a Baseline Before You Ask for More
Ask for one check-in a day, consistently, for several months, before suggesting anything else. Trust in the data builds from consistency, not intensity.
Let Teachers Choose Their Own Pace
Do not insist that every teacher check in more than once a day. Let those who see the value do more, in their own time, and let the results speak for themselves.
Test Your Assumptions, and Be Ready to Be Wrong
Henty assumed transport was a major factor in readiness to learn. The data suggested otherwise. Use the check-in to test a hypothesis, not just confirm what staff already believe.
It Is Not Just a Data Tool
The point was never to collect more data for its own sake. It was to support students to have greater learning success, because a student who is not happy or ready to learn will struggle regardless of what is taught. The data is simply evidence of that support happening.
“As educators, we’re always willing to try something that’s going to make it better. I think, go slow and just embed and make it a habit, I think would be the best thing.”
Bring Student Voice, Wellbeing and School Data Together All in One Place
Book a personalised conversation with a Life Skills GO education specialist. We will guide you through a short, interactive demonstration and show how the platform supports early identification, student voice, engagement and belonging, partnerships with families and carers, proactive intervention, staff decision-making and continuous whole-school improvement.
More about the demo, and reports
You will also have the opportunity to ask questions, explore how Life Skills GO could support your school’s priorities and determine whether it is the right fit for your community.
Life Skills GO supports schools and systems of every size, sector and context, including metropolitan, regional and remote schools, government, Catholic, independent and specialist settings, and support classes.
Put the Reports Into the Meetings You Already Hold
At Henty, the value of Life Skills GO was never limited to the daily check-in itself. The value came from what happened next, and the reporting was designed to slot into meetings and routines the school already had, rather than create new ones.
Check-in data is reviewed each morning on the Assistant Principal’s dashboard, exported into whole-school reports when a pattern needs a closer look, and printed for learning support meetings and parent conversations. Reports are shared, where relevant, with the school counsellor and school nurse, so the people already supporting a student have the same picture to work from.
Staff do not need to build new reports or learn a separate system. The check-in sits inside Sentral, the roll marking system teachers already use every day, so the information staff need is organised around the conversations and meetings they are already having, not a new process layered on top.
Take These Ideas Further
Go deeper on the themes in Henty’s story, from free expert guides you can use with your team tomorrow, to the wider Life Skills GO resource library.
Free Guides & Expert Insights
Practical downloads for educators, leaders and families, including neuroscience-backed insight on emotions, learning and wellbeing.
Neuroscience of Emotions and Learning
FeaturingDr Mark Williams (Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience) with Nikki Bonus, on how emotions shape learning, grounded in brain research and Life Skills GO practice.
Get the Free ResourceWhy Students Disengage and What Helps Them Reconnect
FeaturingA practical guide from leading education, wellbeing and neuroscience experts, including Dr Mark Williams OAM, Professor Geoff Masters AO, Nikki Bonus and Karen Robertson.
Get the Free ResourceMore Guides & Resources
The full Life Skills GO resource library, including guides on whole-school wellbeing implementation, measurement and classroom practice.
Browse the Resource LibraryBook a personalised meeting with our education wellbeing specialist, to show you how Life Skills GO can help you achieve your school’s wellbeing goals. We will guide you through a short interactive demo and answer any questions to help you determine if Life Skills GO is right for your school.
Book a meeting with our education wellbeing specialist